Arrest of witness revives talk against Dumpit

AFTER tearfully denying charges that her case against policeman Adonis Dumpit is sustained by money from drug traders, Janeth Badana is turning the tables on the officer.

In an interview with Sun.Star Cebu, Badana pointed out how one of the policeman’s defense witnesses, Francis delos Santos, 41, was recently arrested for alleged drug peddling during a buy-bust operation.

“So who now has ties to drug traders?” she asked in Bisaya about her erstwhile neighbor on Villagonzalo St., Barangay Tejero, Cebu City.

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She anticipates a whitewash over the drug charges against delos Santos provided he sticks to defending the policeman when called to testify. While he was arrested by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (Pdea) 7, not a Cebu City-based police unit, powerful people can still intercede, she said.

“Makuot ra gihapon na (That case can still get fixed),” she said.

Badana is the mother of Ronron Go, the 17-year old robbery suspect Dumpit was charged with having shot from the back twice. The policeman is set to be arraigned at the Regional Trial Court in Cebu City this month.

The policeman has denied the charge of murder and is expected to enter a not guilty plea.

In his counter-affidavit to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), he said Go moved into the path of the bullets he fired at co-suspect Jujun Gador, who shot at him first.

He presented the affidavits of two witnesses, delos Santos and a certain Jimmy Gador, who claimed that Go was armed at that time and was part of the robbery group Dumpit and his fellow cops were pursuing.

His defense lawyer, Pedro Leslie Salva, hinted that drug traders might be supporting the move to have the policeman kept in jail, adding that Badana has been seen in the company of a drug trader’s wife.   

It’s an allegation Badana has tearfully denied.

In an interview, Banada stressed that delos Santos’ March 1, 2010 arrest by the Pdea, assisted by operatives from the Investigative and Detective Management Branch of the police, shows that it is Dumpit who has associates in the drug trade.

She said delos Santos, prior to his arrest, testified in the policeman’s favor in the administrative case they filed against him with the National Police Commission.

However, in one of their sessions, delos Santos allegedly approached her privately and apologized. 

She said delos Santos will testify in the policeman’s favor again, especially now that there is something that can be used to compel him: a non-bailable drug peddling case.

She stressed that making delos Santos’ drug case go away in exchange for testifying in favor of Dumpit as planned, is not impossible.

She said Dumpit is backed by people who could “arrange that a murder suspect not be sent to the Cebu City Jail but instead detained in a stockade subsequently supposedly installed with air-conditioning and a flat-screen television set.” (KNR)